Tonight's red post collection is MASSIVE! This collection includes the June champion & skins schedule, Gypsylord responding to another batch of Ekko feedback and offering context on the PBE Jinx Q changes, L4T3NCY on Mark/Dash changes in 5.10, Meddler with context on the recent PBE utility mastery changes, Scarizard and friends with the first patch of Live Gameplay Q+A answers, a delightful batch of Star Guadian Lux fan art, and much more!

June Sales Schedule

It's been a while but here's WizardCrab with a list of the skins and champions that will be discounted in the weekly sales some point throughout June!

"Check out all the champs and skins that’ll be on sale this June. Like previous sales schedules, we’re not posting the exact dates for each champ and skin, but they’ll all be on sale sometime next month, so keep an eye out.

Just a heads up – Since we’re publishing these in advance, we won’t offer partial refunds on content bought before it’s on sale."

REMEMBER: There are no exact dates being given for these, only that they will be on sale sometime in June.

Ekko PBE Feedback Round 2

"Another update, sry for the delay. We're jamming hard on bugs and whatnot so I haven't had much free time.

Bug fixerino: Over next few days we should be fixing a number of the bugs related to Ekko's first few Ultimates in a given game. He won't be able to instantly ult his position after ranking the spell, and he should be healing and teleporting correctly from cast #1 onwards.

On the subject of Q and W reliability:

Q and W are unreliable, it's true, but my hope is that Ekko's kit allows him to find situations where they become reliable based on context. Stuff like combo'ing W with allied CC, using E's dash to reposition for Q2, slowing people with the passive and Q while inside the W zone. These kind of things have resulted in much more reliability in internal playtests.

We're adding a symbol above the R clone that should make it easier to pick out in a teamfight, both for Ekko and his enemies. Let us know how it looks. Is it helping you figure out where's he's going to end up?

Minor nerf going in, again to the W execute damage, should make it a bit better for last hitting early but a good deal worse for training people down when ahead. The W is intended to give Ekko finishing potential, but not without clever use of his other skills.

P

Q

W
On-hit execute damage changed to 5%+1%/45AP from 4% + 1%/35AP

E

R

The primary thing we're keeping an eye on right now is the nature of Ekko's snowballing. When he's even or behind we feel he's generally pretty fair and has to use all his tools optimally to succeed. When he gets ahead however those patterns tend to break down, and while there's always going to be a bit of pattern breakdown on ANY champion who's ahead, we want to make sure that games where Ekko snowballs into EZ-mode aren't happening all the time and he's getting there in a way that makes sense.

Again, thanks for the feedback. Reading all of it. Going to right up a context post on what we feel he should be good and bad at before release to shed more light on why certain things are strong (and why some things may be too strong)"

Context on Jinx PBE Q Changes

As you may have noticed in the 5/18 PBE update, Jinx received a few changes to how her Q's minigun attack speed bonus works - the base amount was reduced and she now gets an extra bonus % based off of her level.

"Jinx changes are intended to reduce her early snowballing off of lane dueling and taking towers. She's going to feel this most levels 5-12. Her late game is not impacted, it's just going to be harder for her to get there.

Riot Jag and I have been working on some Jinx nerfs and I wanted to drop in really quick to give some context on them before diving back into Ekko bugs D:
The changes are as follows:

Q - Switcheroo!:

Minigun bonus AS:: 30/55/80/105/130% >>> 30/40/50/60/70%
Minigun now gains 0/2/4/6/8/10/15/20/25/30/35/40/45/50/55/60/65/70% additional AS based on character level.

I've attached a graph that shows Jinx's total bonus AS (from Q + character AS/lvl). Green line is Jinx on live, red line is Jinx with the nerfs, and Blue line is the total AS she'll have lost at any given level. (Also yes I get it, I didn't title the graph or label the axes. I am the worst.)

TLDR, minigun AS will be the same @ lvl 1, down 20-35% between lvls 5-12, break even @ lvl 16 and be up 10% @ lvl 18

The intent behind these nerfs is to hit Jinx's early game by lowering her tower taking potential and early AA'ing dueling. She's pretty well defined as a hyper carry and within that niche is further defined by her cleanup potential. As such we feel that for a character who's kit lends itself to snowballing it is probably too easy to get the snowball rolling. These changes aim to curb that level-9-double-kill-bot-lane-and-take-their-tower case and smooth it out more towards level 13+. Her late game is not impacted, it's just going to be harder for her to get there.

Also worth noting that these nerfs, like many other we do, are a matter of degrees. Jinx is still going to be a tower demolishing monster and minigun is still going to attack CRAZY fast. Hopefully though, getting that first structure is going to take an extra minion wave or two, and dueling that Draven is going to be a bit more ill-advised."

Mark/Dash Changes for 5.10

Next up we have L4T3NCY with a heads up on the ARAM Mark/Dash summoner spell changes coming up in patch 5.10:

"Heya guys, ^_^/

We have some changes to the new ARAM summoner spell Mark/Dash currently on PBE and I wanted to give some extra context. These tweaks are slated for 5.10, but we'll keep an eye on the results and adjust as necessary.

- Moved the damage split on Mark/Dash to 50/50.

We like the damage split but don't want to send the wrong message about 'needing to follow up'. Many of us don't require any extra encouragement, even when the mind is tellin' you NOO~OO! ♪

- Cooldown up to 40sec from 20sec

The spell was firmly in a space of "If this is on cooldown, I should use it", regardless of effectiveness at the time. We want to move it more into the realm of, "Hmm, if we have a fight coming up soon, I might want to hang onto this.". There is a risk of this being too long, so we'll keep an eye on it.

- Range down to 1600 from 2500

We wanted to bring the range down to roughly 'a screen', as was sometimes hard to tell whohad hit you. "Is this snowflake above my head the Ashe or the Darius? Should I be scared?".That's not a fun guessing game to play. :/ If it turns out this is too short to offset eating risk-free poke on a spell that can potentially fizzle, we can always tweak again."

"I wanted to hop in and share some overall thoughts about Mark/Dash as well.

Our goal with Mark/Dash was to create a healthier environment for all champions on ARAM. Due to the nature of a one lane 5v5 map, some champions are naturally going to have stronger kits than others. We wanted to give champions with fewer strategic options viability in the game mode. We can already see the improvements the spell has made because we're seeing higher play rates of some traditionally unpopular champions and lower dodge rates on ARAM.

The spell is a bit overwhelming now, so we're committed to balancing the spell. We want to move it away from a place where it's a must-have regardless of champion, while continuing to improve the viability of some our more unpopular champions.

Please continue to give us your feedback and thoughts on the spell, we're reading all of it!"

Context on PBE Utility Mastery Changes

"Our current focus with the Utility masteries is on making going deep into the tree appropriately rewarding, particularly for caster supports and more utility focused mages. As part of that we're experimenting with making Meditation (the mana regen) significantly more powerful, but putting it later in the tree so it's one of the key distinctions between deep utility and other routes. Expanded Mind (max mana) then goes earlier, as a flat bonus instead of a %, making it particularly targeted at champions that start with a really small mana pool and want an early increase. There's a definite risk that'll leave going 9 points into utility as too unrewarding and we might need to do some work on that too, first thing we want to address is getting 21+ points in utility into a better spot however.

Viktor, bugs, and the F2P rotation

Since the launch of 5.9, both Viktor and Rumble have been disabled due to bugs. As Viktor was slotted to be on the free champion rotation for last week but was disabled the majority of the time, he has been removed and Jinx took n his place. Viktor will return to the rotation once he is fixed.

Greetings, summoners and welcome to the first issue of the LIVE GAMEPLAY Q+A!

We’ve collected thousands of questions from around the world and whittled ‘em on down until just a few were left, tossed ‘em in a bucket and went to task of providing you with answers (with some sweet context on the side).

BEFORE WE BEGIN - i’m going to call a couple of folks out (read: like 60%+) that submitted for just posting their opinions and then pretending like they were questions. We’re onto you.

Without further snark (FOR NOW), let’s jump right in!

Do you feel the game is best balanced towards the millions that play the game, or the small few that play on the professional level?

What a way to start. As one of our most commonly asked questions around the world, let’s dig in and start breaking it down. Deciding ‘who we balance for’ hasn’t been an easy task, but we quickly honed in on a few core values: competitive mindedness, mechanical aptitude, and strategic expertise. Mind you, these aren’t the only things that we think contribute to player skill (e.g. raw leadership and communication skills are important in any team game), but the above are ones we focus on when it comes to our broad-level balance. Players with these qualities are, on average, much more consistent as a baseline of what’s powerful in League. But what about pros? Certainly our professional community shatters these conditions (some more than others, as even professional players have their strengths and weaknesses), but we don’t necessarily believe that the Fakers and Bjergsens of the world should be the standard that every player is held to. If that’s the case, how can we represent this spectrum most effectively?

Let’s back up a step. Along the spiral path that is Mastery in League of Legends, you can divide it into two sections: foundational skills and optimization. To expand, foundational skills are the building blocks of strategy within League - knowing the why and how of objectives, understanding the nuances of proper itemization, manipulating the ever-important vision game, and executing against your team’s strategic composition are just a few examples. You can be stronger at some and weaker at others, but each is a crucial piece when it comes to putting together League’s sprawling strategic puzzle. By contrast, optimization is the fine-tuning and development of these skills - when to take an objective, what order to build your items, where to place or deny vision, the mechanical specifics of champion matchups, and so on. Optimization is necessary for players that have mastered the basics to gain subtle (but potent) edges against the opposition. Think of it like building muscle - foundational skills net you the strength, and optimization shows off your definition.

Where does that leave us? Foundational skills and degrees of optimization are different for every player (not to mention difficult to measure with a high degree of accuracy), so we lean on the MMR system to serve as our best proxy to represent a player’s individual skill. With that in mind, our philosophy leads us to balance towards players at the upper end of mastery, which we currently believe to be around platinum and above.

This doesn’t mean we devalue the feedback from players below platinum - only that we’re acknowledging that a high amount of variance occurs in those tiers. Many factors are at play - is Master Yi overpowered if you’re able to dominate a game with him? Alternatively, did the enemy team lack the understanding to focus-fire or apply crowd control? With a more strategic use of map movement, item builds and mechanical execution against Master Yi, more competitive players at a higher average skill help to paint a clearer picture of Master Yi’s power level, often revealing when the intended play against him is failing and needs us to intervene. Extreme outliers, be they pubstompers or pro-level pains will always be addressed, but more often than not our patch-to-patch changes are centered around this skill bracket.

Whew. For our next question, lets turn the spotlight onto some of Live Gameplay team’s finest to answer in their own words. First up, LGP’s Lead Designer and Actual Horse, FeralPony!

Have you ever done (or considered) performing small balance changes purely to affect player perception? For instance, giving a champion a small numbers buff to make players try them out, only to realise they were probably in a good place anyway.

FP: "Considered? Certainly. Times we’ve ever done it intentionally? None that I can think of. There’s a lot of power in doing changes like this, but the risk typically doesn’t outweigh the reward. You’d effectively be trying to leverage the placebo effect, but that risks burning player trust long-term, which is something we value immensely. For instance, we’d never want players sifting through our patch notes, wondering if we actually thought a certain buff or nerf would affect change or not.

There was one time when I was pretty new at Rito where I submitted a Vladimir nerf (removing the bonus speed from his pool) but forgot to actually submit the files into the patch. As a result, the patch notes went out and sentiment was that we had killed the champion. Vladimir’s play rate plummeted and his win rate decreased a bit, even though the changes never actually went out.

We had a similar instance when Riven was released where she was viewed as very weak. We hotfixed in some buffs and shortly after posting it to the forums, her play rate spiked and feedback was very positive. Players happily reported how great the buffs felt, even though the hotfix hadn’t actually gone live yet."

Last up, Game Designer and Legendary Olaf enthusiast SmashGizmo takes us out.

I’ve noticed that almost no champion is commonly built as a true hybrid at this point - is there a balance issue with hybridization, or is this unintentional?

SG: "There isn’t really a direct balance reason why hybridization doesn’t work, but we’ve historically had a difficult time making it a legitimate option as the natural synergies in specialized AD or AP builds are really hard to compete with. With specialized multipliers like Void Staff, Last Whisper, Rabadon’s Deathcap and Infinity Edge, it’s just pretty much impossible to get a character to commit to a ‘hybrid build’ beyond a Trinity Force or Hextech Gunblade (which they build for early power-spike reasons). Multiplicative scaling is almost always better at that point in a build path.
I think the only way to really make hybrid builds work is to add a new keystone item or two for hybridization that somehow drives players to balance their AD/AP purchases, but that’s no small undertaking and it’s unclear what the benefits of that itemization path would be. While characters like Ezreal have a distinct feel when built heavy AD or AP, it’s possible that a combination of both makes them feel like worse mages or worse marksmen when it comes to damage rather than anything truly unique."

Thanks for all your questions! Our next collection period begins on May 25th and ends on June 1st. Submit your questions to ask.fm/asklivegameplay and we’ll see you for the next one!

-Live Gameplay"

When asked about the series answering only higher level questions vs champion specific questions, Scarizard noted:

"It's not a hard rule that all champion-styled questions are out (we have a couple in our bucket), but very pointed questions like 'Why did you nerf X/Y' usually are passed up for questions like 'What are the issues with balancing champions with X or Y mechanic?' The more durable knowledge an answer can provide, the higher we tend to value it internally. Things like 'Who do you balance for', for instance was the most popular non-champion related question across all regions, so we thought i'd be a meaty topic to dive into for #1"

As for the amount of questions answered per installment, Scarizard commented:

"Seeing as there were 1060~ questions just from North America alone (with about 800+ uniques) within a time-span of only a week of collection, answering every question from every region isn't really feasible. For future issues we'll work on pushing more of them out, but 3-5 is around what our current expectations are, every few weeks."

Feedback on Design Communications

Following the first Live Gameplay Q&A, Scarizard popped on reddit looking for feedback about what the communications team can do to improve their various projects for communicating changes to players!

Hey y'all - for those of you that don't know me, i'm a former Game Designer, currently Design Communications @ Riot Games. I've been working with /u/Pwyff and the Live Gameplay team since around October of 2014 on things like the Patch Notes, Rundowns, Devblogs, and most recently the Live Gameplay Q+A (Which just launched its first issue today! You can find the link on the boards here ([link] )!

The gist of this post is that we're looking to be more iterative and experimental with the types of communication that you'll see this year regarding Design (specifically Live Gameplay) - so i'm putting out feelers and looking for any feedback about what content you already like, what types of things you'd like to see, or how to improve any of the projects we're currently doing!

This'll be one piece of the feedback-puzzle that we consult when we're looking for new things to explore, so i thought i'd extend a hand. I'll stick around for a while to respond to and answer questions, so hit me!

-S"

Fan Artist Feature - Lazuli

"Hey Summoners! A lot of you have suggested master-doodler Lazuli for the Fan Artist Feature, so this week we’re excited to share her adorable comics showing champions in a hilarious new light. Follow her on Tumblr and Facebook to see more of her work!

If you know someone that you'd like to recommend for a future Fan Artist Feature, please let us know here.

How did you get started creating League of Legends fan art?

Right before I started making League art, I was actually in a huge slump. I used to make fancomics and fanart before for other games, but after a while, I lost interest in them. I was itching to draw, but I just didn't know what. At the same time, a friend of mine had been trying for 2 years to get me to play League. Since I was out of inspiration and tired of my friend bugging me all the time, I finally gave it a go, and the silly things that went on in-game inspired me to draw again!

What's been your favorite piece to create, and why?

Ooh, that's a tough one. Each piece I draw was fun in its own way! I never make a piece if it's not at least 50% fun. Probably my Oasis of the Dawn comic, just because my overall favorite thing to convey in my art is lame jokes.

I would say my DJ Sona gifs were also my favorite piece, but animation is a LOT of work! I almost didn't do it, because it was pretty much 51% work and only 49% fun. But I suppose it's rewarding to see how your animation looks in the end, even if it's just a small gif like that.

Do you have a dream project you’d like to work on?

Yes! I would really love to make my own physical comic of the League champs just going about their life outside the rift! That's my biggest dream project I got going on right now. I would also like to one day make a huge poster with ALL of the champs, but that can prove quite difficult when there's new champs coming out about every other month!

Who’s your inspiration? Do you have any favorite League fan artists?

Actually, most of my inspiration falls on artists who draw things other than League. However, if I were to name a specific League fan artist, my inspiration when first starting out was Tumblr artist totemhead. They used to make comics of Draven and Darius and Ezreal and Talon that I really enjoyed! I was also inspired by their chibi artstyle.

Other than that, my main inspirations are Rebecca Sugar, creator of Steven Universe, andMadeline Rupert, a comic artist I followed on DeviantArt since my adolescent days, who has now blossomed into a comic artist for Regular Show.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with the community?

I know that in the League community (and in life in general) you can get a lot of salt. People telling you what you can or can't do, what's the "meta" way to do things, how you're wrong for doing or seeing things differently. I'd like to tell you all to never listen to people like that and to always be welcoming to fresh, new ideas! This goes for your playstyle, for starting artists out there, and for people who are trying to figure out a way to get to their dreams. If you have goals, work daily to try to accomplish them, and you'll see results! It may take a week or maybe even a couple of years, but you'll see the light at the end of the tunnel eventually."

Star Guardian Lux Fan Art

"With Star Guardian Lux now fighting evil on the rift, it’s time to share some of the magical community creations inspired by her release! Check out the gallery below, and click on the artists’ names to see more of their work.